Tonight there's an awful lot of my friends and acquaintances with garbled, screamy messages on their phones that go something like this "Do you know anything about snakes? There's a ****ing 2 foot ****ing snake going ****ing nuts on my stable yard! AGH!!!!!"

In the end, after I'd attempted to get out the horse's hay and put the hens to bed whilst brandishing a large broom, somebody called me back just as it appeared again and we decided it was a grass snake and I wasn't going to die

It's over two feet long, very fast, just finishing it's skin shed (hence the frantic movements I guess) and NOT VERY WELCOME

What would you do? They're protected so I can't trap and move it. I certainly have no wish to harm it, but how can I go about normal life with it potentially hidden in my muck heaps, grazing, hedges, dry stone walls or fodder barn? To top it all I spent all those weeks raising baby frogs to eat the slugs and the wretched snake will gobble them down like Smarties.

My friend's closing comment when we'd identified the beast was " You should feel very privileged to have a grass snake use your land" Well I don't feel very privileged right now!

It won't do you any harm and you will rarely, if ever, see it. If it was shedding that is probably the only reason you saw it this time. I agree, you are privileged.

Snakes feel vibration, they can't hear, which is why you only see them occasionally, as this one.Only when they are distracted or dozy or cold. And they eat mice as well as amphibians. Enoy being the chosen one.

By the way, we have a huge snake living in our wall by the back door and we never see it, only know it's there because it got caught in some chicken wire and went straight there when freed. The dogs let us know when it is in as they stick their noses in the holes. the most we ever see is a disappearing tail.

We have grass snakes in the nature reserve where we walk the dog. Last yearwe nearly trod on one that was lying across the path, when we realised that itwasn't actually a stick - then once my friend had stopped screaming -I poked it but it didn't move until we'd backed away. Apparently they "play dead" asa defence. They have a lot of predators...including hedgehogs! not so scary thenFinding a moulted snakeskin was always a great trophy when I was growing up, &would get shown to all my friends. It probably still would now.

"He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals." --Immanuel Kant

D'you know, I've come round to the idea of having snakes live on my land now and they're welcome. There's adders galore near here, though not on my patches, but larger grass snakes are apparently rare so I really am privileged

Got some nice basking rocks heaped on the main yard that need carrying a few hundred yards to safe, sunny places as far away from us humans as possible and next spring I'll make sure the Belfast sinks where the frogs breed are out in the same area too.

That one seemingly aggressive evening in it's company was down to circumstance rather than snakes being threatening.